1437 Godz and Authorities
Why authority is so often considered the source of the law, and above the law...
Why authority is so often considered the source of the law, and above the law...
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Hey, perps, it's Seth. | |
13th of August, 2009. | |
This is a herrrr, me me me, a warm-up for a video that I will be doing in the not too distant-y future around the after-effects of religiosity and our perception of authorities a warm-up for a video that I will be doing in the not | |
Right, because it's not that long ago that religion collapsed in the non-US Western democracies. | |
It's not that long ago. | |
It's not like the moment that it collapses, it takes all of the historical errors with it. | |
So, I think it's well worth talking about The effects that religion has had upon people's perception of the separation between authority and virtue, which has continued to corrupt people's thinking in these matters. | |
So, dictatorship and theocracy are two sides of the same coin, and very often you will see That when religiosity fails, when theocracy fails, statism swells, secular statism. | |
And that aspect of things, where it's like 100% dictatorship, 100% of possible dictatorship, which doesn't mean 100% of actual dictatorship, 100% of possible dictatorship, and if religiosity and statism are 50-50, the priest and the king, And religiosity goes down to 20, it's not like people's freedom, the dictatorship goes to 70%. | |
So if it's 50-50 and religion goes to 50-20, it's not like people's freedom increases and the dictatorial aspects go down to 70%. | |
No, no, no, my friends. | |
As we can see from the largely secular, yet incredibly socialist Scandinavian countries and other countries, What happens is the state expands to fill the void in religiosity, which means that people are still accepting the errors that lead to statism, | |
to dictatorship. To me, the fundamental aspect of statism or immoral authority And I'll just use the short-term authority here. | |
I don't mean an expert. I mean immoral, coercive, or manipulative authority. | |
The state is physical abuse. | |
Religion is emotional abuse, verbal abuse, which is more powerful in many ways. | |
So, to go back To the origination of nations. | |
The originations. | |
To go back to the start of things, we have this fundamental problem, which is so ridiculously obvious that it's almost an embarrassment to point it out. | |
But it's a fundamental problem with the Old Testament. | |
Thou shalt not kill is a commandment given by a God who kills. | |
Right? That is absolutely, I mean, that's ridiculously embarrassing. | |
Imagine if I said, UPB proves that you should not kill, and I believe in UPB, and then I went out and killed. | |
Well, of course, people wouldn't. That's a bit silly, right? | |
I forget that doesn't work. | |
I'm the opposite of God. | |
If I... No, it's like it's the argument from authority when the authority contradicts its own argument. | |
So God says, Thou shalt not kill, and that is virtuous. | |
But God kills all over the place. | |
Right? Slaughter the whole world except for Noah. | |
Thou shalt... Not, is almost always followed in the Bible by God doing exactly that. | |
And this is very important, not because we expect consistency from crazy-ass religious texts, but because it creates a fundamental condition that favors power, favors hierarchical power. | |
Because, I mean, the fundamental question in Examination of the Bible is, is God good? | |
Right? I mean, we certainly would not expect an evil entity to say, I'm evil and I'm bad and you should have nothing to do with me. | |
That's not the way it goes, right? | |
Instead, we would expect the evil entity to say, I'm good and you should obey me. | |
And so the question, which was asked way back in the podcast series in Power of Virtue or Love Story, the question is, do we worship God because God is good or because God is powerful? | |
Now, the problem with that formulation is that it's a false dichotomy. | |
We should not worship God because God is good, right? | |
Because worship is a state of credulity. | |
It's a state of blind adulation. | |
And... We also cannot worship power. | |
Because power is morally neutral. | |
It's like praying to your electrical socket. | |
And if we worship only power, we can't imagine that there's anything to do with ethics involved. | |
And so, it's just impossible. | |
To sustain thesis, to say that we should worship power or we should worship goodness. | |
But at least it's more credible to worship goodness than it is to worship power. | |
To be an ethical fanboy is not bad. | |
So, if we are worshipping power, then we are mere bootlicking court toadies. | |
Simperingly swanning over whatever the king says because the king has a bunch of hitmen in tin can costumes. | |
And you can't sustain that as an ethical thing, right? | |
Then you can't say to children, you should worship God because God is powerful. | |
And so you then have to say, well, God is good, right? | |
Right. | |
And say, well, how do you know God is good? | |
Well, he tells us he's good. Well, that's not something that children are ever allowed to do, right? | |
Did you break this virus? No. | |
Okay. Right? | |
That's not how it works for kids, right? | |
Proof is required. I need you to sign this note that says you've read my report card. | |
I'm not going to show you my report card. | |
Just trust me, they're all A's. No, no, no, no. | |
I need to see the report card. | |
Right? That's the way it works with parents and children. | |
Children are not allowed to just have things on their say-so. | |
And, you know, I think that's not unreasonable. | |
It's sort of a foundation of philosophy, after all. | |
Evidence and science and proof and so on. | |
So, God is proclaimed... | |
It's self-proclaimed to be virtuous, and God hands out Ten Commandments, which are virtuous, virtuous according to God, and then God breaks every single one of them, except perhaps worship no God before me, right? He doesn't worship someone else more than himself. | |
A narcissistic little ghost, worship me. | |
And so clearly, by the very standards that God lays out for other people, God is not good. | |
And so what is then created, and I don't think it's accidental, what is created is a blank spot with regards to authority and morality. | |
And we see exactly the same thing with the state. | |
Right? The state says, And how does it enforce that commandment? | |
By stealing through taxation. | |
You see, it's exactly the same parallel. | |
And this is the after-effect of religion, right? | |
and the after-effect of there not being scope or will for philosophers to come up with a rational system of ethics. | |
So this is the hangover, right? | |
which is that there's a huge blank spot when it comes to virtue and power. | |
And that blank spot is the vacuum that power grows in. | |
People can't... | |
they cannot... | |
They lack, I don't know, something, which we've talked about in many various guises. | |
We don't have to get into it all here. | |
But they lack a fundamental recognition that authority is subject to its own commandments. | |
Authority is the law and is the opposite of the law at the same time. | |
All men are subject to the law, yet the men in charge of the law are not subject to the law and are in fact praised for its opposite. | |
I mean, this is all seriously trippy stuff, right? | |
And it doesn't take more than a moment's thought to realize and see and grasp, really, just how nutty this fundamentally is. | |
The law is moral. | |
All men are subject to the law, but the magistrates are praised for doing the opposite of what the law maintains as moral, and they are moral. | |
An action and its exact opposite are both moral. | |
The opposite of the action that is moral is evil for those subject to the law and moral for those in charge of the law, i.e., Stealing is wrong for all who are subject to the law. | |
The magistrates are subject to the law, but the magistrates are moral for stealing. | |
Now, how can such blatant irrationality, anti-rationality really, this massive short circuit of the human system, how can this be sustained? | |
Well, it takes a lot of brutality and abuse for people to miss Obvious corruption. | |
I mean, think of the woman who's in an abusive marriage. | |
Take a stereotype. Husband's beaten up in her own. | |
It's taken years of propaganda for her not to revolt against such revolting treatment. | |
And that level of propaganda starts in the family and in the church. | |
Right? Here's another one. | |
The parent slaps the child saying, don't hit your sister. | |
Hitting is wrong. | |
Especially, right, don't bully your sister because you're so much bigger than her, says the parent, yelling and towering over the child, right? | |
Hello for the baby. | |
In other words, a disparity in strength should provoke gentleness, but the disparity in strength between the parent and the child provokes brutality sometimes. | |
Right? | |
There you go, Spines. | |
Something for you to play with. | |
Don't eat it. | |
And that is the blank spot where authority exists. | |
Right? | |
Where unjust and corrupt authority grows. | |
Music, honey? | |
Thank you. | |
And in the absence of religion, it's much, much harder to sustain. | |
And certainly in the absence of brutal and authoritarian parenting, it would be impossible to sustain. | |
This is how we overthrow the state, is we have to Overthrow the origin of this null zone. | |
All are subject to the law. | |
All who disobey the law are immoral. | |
The enforcers of the law who disobey the law are virtuous. | |
Those with the greatest power who disobey the law are moral. | |
Those with the least power who disobey the law are evil. | |
God is above his law called thou shalt not kill because he is all-powerful. | |
The greater the power, the greater the morality of disobeying the laws that all are subject to. | |
Right? And it's really hard to see for people. | |
It's really hard to see this. | |
That's why people have such a tough time with taxation as force. | |
Because they believe that abstract entities Are above the law. | |
Well, how did they get the sense that abstract entities are above the law? | |
When patriotism is allegiance to an abstract entity called a country. | |
Well, there is also, of course, the category of father and mother. | |
Right, so... | |
Father and mother have value as categories... | |
That very often are considered to trump the actions of the individuals who inhabit those categories, i.e. | |
the biological mothers and fathers, if they do wrong to their children. | |
The category called the state has a moral dimension that is the opposite of every individual who inhabits it. | |
The individual magistrate cannot steal, but the individual as magistrate can steal, must steal. | |
In fact, it's immoral if stealing does not occur, right? | |
If he refuses to collect tax, he's not enforcing the law. | |
So where do people get this idea that the categories are above the law, that the individuals are subjected to the law? | |
But the categories are not, though, of course, the categories don't exist, and there are only individuals. | |
Well, this comes out of God, right? | |
Now, I mean, God in many ways comes out of the family, but we're just talking about the religious aspect of it at the moment. | |
Just giving Dershwiti Kins a chance to enjoy the view. | |
Dershwiti Kins a chance to enjoy the view. | |
It's pretty out there, isn't it? | |
We can just see the river and the wheat and the trees. | |
It's beautiful. But it's warm and I've got her in a onesie to keep the bugs off her so I won't stay too long as I don't want her to get overly hot. | |
And this is a key and core reason why we still need to oppose religiosity Even in the countries where the fundamentalist form of religion is laughed at, right? | |
Even countries or the more secular Western democracies like France and, to some degree, Germany. | |
We still need to keep fighting this, because now we're fighting the ghost of God. | |
God was always a ghost, but even after you slay one image, the ghost remains in the afterimage of irrational ethics of the blank spot. | |
Wherein the laws proclaimed by authority, those in authority are immoral for following. | |
That comes directly out of the Ten Commandments being perpetually violated by the God of the Old Testament. | |
So, I mean, I think the fight still needs to be continued, right? | |
And what you are fighting is no longer God, but the shadow of God, which is in many ways a trickier thing. | |
All right. I'll take a pause and attend to the baby. | |
Thank you so much for listening, as always. |